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Rafters
Blake E. Hamilton | | | | | |
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This is the place where I sat as a child, staring longingly at lost
vestiges of lives lived on the brink of pure ecstasy and madness. The
books are painted like rafters, stuck in my parents' old wooden chest.
The volumes are thumbed down to a neatly pleated gold which overflow with
a dust so grainy that it beads on the coarse ridges of my fingers.
But none of that is important really. What I remember most about
my days as a youth and as a derelict are thoughts of longing and
the way these thoughts stained everything a sky blue-blue with
innocence, a ripe desire of wondrous elation. The elation-a book,
a torrid sun, and sounds from the radio. Singing, a note, a grand
stage lit like summer pavement, drags me along a cowpath, littered
with gravel and trees that hang over our heads with a maternal
care.
*****
"Simon", he said, reassessing himself, "why do you guess all the
time? Wondering what you're doing and why? It's not important.
Learn that and you'll be a better man."
I often thought personal revelations coming from my friend Brian
were unfounded and only ways for him to show off his burgeoning
philosophical calling. "P'shaw, just shutup." I said. That's
what I always often repeated, more as a way to turn the
conversation in a completely new direction. It never really
worked.
"I hate this place you know," I said with an unconvincing amount
of vigor. I continued to play with a book of matches that I had
found on the floor.
"No you don't, don't allow tedium to overtake you. Live a little,
uh, some people can't handle boredom, but, I can, but other people
can't, so just...". He trailed off, obviously realizing the inane
course he had set his speech.
I retorted with a rather caustic declaration.
"Whatever."
I looked up above at the supports up in the cavernous ceiling.
What a place. It's nothing but a run down food shop that's had
about a thousand different names, but as the summer descended upon
us that particular May, it was going by "The Blank Envelope".
Quite a shanty, I always thought, but it attracted its own
repertoire of eccentric usuals. The tables were old and
decrepit-the wood looked incredibly aged and unable to handle the
weight of a coffee cup, much less a piping hot entre.
Brian was fiddling about with his notebook and pen, drawing something or
writing down an incorrigible amount of rubbish that I often openly spoke
out against. Art, I had made my mind up, was an insignificant portrayal
of the human spirit. Whatever that meant.
Wrapped around him was his token long black jacket, with striped socks at
his ankles and a scarf scuttling his neck, completely white with only a
circle drawn at the end, with a dot in the middle. I never really cared
enough to know what it meant.
I sipped away at my coffee, an absolutely despicable drink. Even to this
day I gag at the mere mention of crushed beans liquefied to twice room
temperature. Of course, I thought differently then.
Over by the kitchen the bartender Kent was talking to an obviously
disgruntled employee. The waiter had blond hair and thick black glasses.
His apron was spotless, which struck me as odd, for the restaurant was
about as pitiful as possible, and still able enough to pass any sanitation
laws. Kent and I never really got along. The first time I had ever
stepped foot inside the place he began to hassle me. Incessant and
relentless he was. I never really knew him well enough to dislike him.
"Hey buddy, you got a problem?" he snared.
I suddenly realized I had been staring.
"Sorry."
You'd think that after probably funding his college trust funds (for those
lucky wife and kids) the guy could at least learn your name. Whatever.
I went to sip my coffee again as I glanced back in front of me. Brian was
fiddling with something new he had found in one of his pockets-a common
treasure often dug up, when I saw behind him, a new busboy. Rather, this
boy was a girl. She bused with a fervor and a gleeful delight, amidst the
obvious gloom subjected by "The Blank Envelope" to all its employees. She
looked up at last, as my curiosity had just about done me in, and it was
as if then I had witnessed a handshake with heaven.
Her face was smudged with a bit of coffee bean, I believe it was. That
tint matched the dark brown hair falling lightly from beyond her
shoulders. She smiled lightly and walked back to the kitchen. Held in
one hand was a tray of dirty plates and dishes, and in the other, she
carried her dress, gracefully, making sure it didn't touch the ground.
"Hey Si-whoa, you ok? Don't have a conniption on me here tough guy",
Brian spat.
"Sorry. In one of those dazes where your eyes don't really focus in on
anything, they just sort of stare off into space."
"Alright well you have fun with your space and I'm gonna head out. I'll
call you tonight."
I don't remember really saying goodbye to my friend. It didn't really
matter at the time. The idea of falling in love upon seeing someone for
the first time had always been such a completely fake thing. I thought it
was only something sung about in Beatles songs. Beatles songs sung by
Ringo, no less. To be honest, I didn't know if I was in love at that
moment, though perhaps in utter admiration. I convinced myself that I had
just witnessed true beauty. True beauty, absolutely divine in every angle
and curve. And on that note, I got up from my chair, left a tip on the
table and walked out into the street. The sky was grey, a hopeless void
of color.
*****
I went back two days later, contemplating upon my revelation as if it were
an assignment. And with this assignment came all the unnecessary things
that accompany the dillydallying of l'amour courtois. I walked in, as the
floorboards sang a horrid song that made the couple sitting by the door
wince, at least a little bit. I sat down at the table closest to the bar,
and leaned back in my chair, nervous as hell, but relaxed within my
nervousness. She came from the kitchen and looked at me cautiously. A
man approached me from behind and asked me my order. It was that cautious
and nervous blonde headed boy.
"A coffee please, pile on the sugar and cream too." I snapped.
How rude I was back in those days. If only I had the decency to realize
how I affected others. He brought the coffee quickly, and backed off from
my side without turning around, as if to show some unorthodox Eastern
Shinto-like bow. So I turned, and he stopped.
"Hey kid, c'mere."
"Yea?"
I looked behind my shoulder at the couple sitting by the door. So happy
they looked, the happiness you only see in government issued propaganda
movies. I started slowly, "Ya know that girl who works here, uh, I think
she has brown hair, uh I-."
"Oh you mean Maggie. Yea, well she's only the girl working here now," he
said. Obviously he knew exactly what I was trying to accomplish here. A
truly hideous depth I had lowered myself to. Halfway through my eminent
smile, it stopped, and I became a bit disgusted with myself. It was if I
had interrupted perfection in the middle of a soliloquy, and told it to go
away. But I didn't know how to stop it. I had always had the habit of
introducing something into my cluttered mind, and complicating it like a
truly masterful artist of paranoia. There it was, ridiculousness, a color
on my palette-right between the reds and the greens.
The friends I lost to this disease, this superior notion of self worth
above which I hold dear, it all played like a sting on my worldy notions.
I had become autistic, a conductor of the noiseless.
He saw my face slowly transform into a gnarled apparition of contemplation
and sulked away.
I slapped some money on the bar and ran out of the place. Scared.
Appalled. I thought I had done an atrocity not worthy of reparation. I
thought a lot of things. None of them were really worth thinking in the
first place. The sky was an even darker grey that day. The hopeless void
of color flew like a virus.
*****
His house was very yellow. I'm not so sure I care for yellow as a house
color. It tries too hard to show up the sun, undoubtedly a trivial task.
"Let me ask you something."
Oh no, here we go. I nodded my head with grace as my faade and my
narrow and cold face as my instrument.
"You ever wonder what people are talking about when they say
'those were the days'?".
I had guessed correctly--questions with literally no answers were Brian's
lifeblood. It kept him going, kept him searching. If it wasn't for
discovery, may the world grow a mouth, and swallow him.
I tried to play along.
"Well, what are they, actually? You seem to have your mind made up."
"Not exactly. I mean, in a year will you look back on today, and think of
it as 'one of those days'."
I shrugged.
"I dunno, I suppose so."
He spit out the last of his sunflower seeds, his dusty old bag empty.
He brushed off his jacket, as the many shells had littered his
wear unkindly.
He looked at me solemnly.
"Lets take a walk."
*****
It only rang once as the alarm clock was in mid snooze mode and I was
awake, dreading its next declaration of morning. The voice on the other
end was somber, and loud, but I suppose it was just part of the waking up
process. He had done it on a tree, hanging like the martyr he thought he
was. My friend, an unnatural extension of nature and relish had ended his
life, leaving me by myself. All alone. Stuck in a race, and it doesn't
end. No, it never ends. Though it didn't surprise me at all. Brian was
always sort of a free soul that obviously didn't need anybody. The talks
we had had, and the time we shared together was more or less ours than
individually mine, or his. He always loved the summer, its new breath was
always a simple reminder of why he was standing where he was standing, and
why he was saying what he was saying. A reminder from the wind.
*****
October came, reluctantly on my part. The soil was covered with leaves,
pierced with a grey shroud that was truly depressing. Oh, how I missed
the south and its sickly humidity. That day I walked into the "Blank
Envelope", which by that time had been renamed to "The Steaming
Hypocrisy". I didn't particularly care for the name, but as long as there
was Kent to scoff at, and the young blonde waiter to pick at, well I was
happy. That day it turned around, and I felt a calm and tepid mood. I
charmed the waitress Maggie into a few joy filled sentences. Sure it
wasn't much, but it was a start. A shallow beginning to whatever it was I
was looking for.
*****
I still to this day don't understand everything-much less these books
plastered in front of me. How they tell a sad tale. Tales of lost
vestiges, forgotten maidens, and virtues transformed. No more is the sky
grey, but a blue, as the sun lingers behind a cloud, waiting for the
perfect opportunity to appear again.
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